Ugh, I like marevl and i admit they have been total creativly garbage for a while.

I know many fans of the 70's like to diss the 90's era, but they had good characterization in books like Generation X, X-force, and most books that decidet to slow down and explore the motivations and inner workings of its cast. And the Paramount subbrand "Star Trek: Star Fleet Acadamy" was good as well.

This current regime under Quesada and now his lacky Alonso could be generously considerd creativly bankrupt.

Peter Davids X-factor is a fun to read, Avengers Acadmy is intresting, and I heard good things about X-force (seperhero wet works squand is just not my thing). Most of their superhero books come down to "Event Pices" and treading water till big summer crossovers happen.

What they have done to the Cross Gen property...is a pale shadow of what crosgen was, their recreation of Mystic was forgettable if you want to be polite.

I would love to see Peter David on a starwars title, but not the rest of their writers.

Marvel doesn't care about the TPB market? Since when? They basically created the modern TPB system in the early 00s.

Sure, they love the fact they can reprint what they've already paid for in single issues and recoup extra money by selling it in trade. A quick way to resell what they've already sold once - it's the same psychology as double-shipping, I'd guess - the desire to sell more without really considering the long-term repercussions on the customer and buying habits (I do find myself wondering if Marvel ever expected a readership of any appreciable size to develop who only waited for the trades rather than buying it twice).

I think part of the issue here is the fact that we're blurring the boundaries of the fact that "graphic novel" was originally a term used for more serious, "mature" storytelling intended to be differentiated from serialised superhero comics. Vertigo was instrumental in the 90s in terms of exploiting - and indeed creating - the OGN market, and yes, in also serialising it on a monthly basis but still creating a TPB with the cache and presentation of an original graphic novel.

Marvel may have assisted in creating the mainstream practice of bundling up a bunch of single issue superhero comics and reselling them as a trade, but unlike other publishers, their forays into OGNs, or that hybrid - the "indie" book that sells better in trade to the bookstore crowd than the comic store to the superhero crowd - have always been brief and sparse. At least in the last few decades. And it's those books, and OGNs, not Marvel's TPBs, that rule the trade charts.

Marvel treat the trade market like a freebie add-on, not like an actual market to be approached on its own terms. Which is fine, they're clearly a solvent business with their own strategies and they make a lot more money than me! But I think that qualifies as not really caring about it beyond the free money they can make by throwing out a trade for a few months before allowing it to fall out of print.

Well, no one was using that "free money" until ten years ago. Remember the dark years when TPBs were the exception? I live in Spain and was able to find the first Uncanny X-Force TPB a few months after the last floppy was released. That's all I, and most trade-waiters, care about: that they put everything into trades, and that they are good quality.

Who cares if they don't publish OGNs and never top the monthly trade charts? How does not having Star Wars OGN hurt the franchise? We've never had them.

Well, no one was using that "free money" until ten years ago. Remember the dark years when TPBs were the exception? I live in Spain and was able to find the first Uncanny X-Force TPB a few months after the last floppy was released. That's all I, and most trade-waiters, care about: that they put everything into trades, and that they are good quality.

Who cares if they don't publish OGNs and never top the monthly trade charts? How does not having Star Wars OGN hurt the franchise? We've never had them.

Well, that wasn't the argument I was presenting. I think things have gotten sidetracked into a broader discussion of the trade market, when really all I'm talking about is how Marvel's current attitude to the trade market may affect their attitude to a potential Star Wars license. They let trades go out of print very quickly and don't often bring them back into print. If this attitude is maintained in respect of the Star Wars franchise, which owes a much larger proportion of its sales to otherwise non-comic-reading people buying trades in Barnes & Noble than Marvel Universe superhero books do, it will be affected negatively. Not only will sales of the trades fall due to lack of availability, but if Marvel chooses not to take trade sales into consideration in terms of their choices for cancellation (which they historically do not do with their superhero books), then Star Wars will appear to be less profitable than it is. This is the company that routinely pulps warehouses full of trades if they don't sell because they don't want to pay for the storage.

So no, I don't really care about Star Wars OGNs or how Marvel generally do in the trade charts. I just care about whether they'd mismanage the Star Wars franchise since they seem focused on part of the market where it doesn't perform well. That's all this is about.

Though I stand by my statement that, comparatively speaking, Marvel doesn't care about the trade market.

Well it's still a future possibility. I'm very glad that the rumours seem to be just that, but it doesn't mean discussion about Marvel is irrelevant, it's just, now, thankfully, more hypothetical than it seemed a day ago.

Well it's still a future possibility. I'm very glad that the rumours seem to be just that, but it doesn't mean discussion about Marvel is irrelevant, it's just, now, thankfully, more hypothetical than it seemed a day ago.

Okay I welcome a actual logical reason about the continuation of the discussion

Okay, I see your point,
@. I was thinking of Marvel's beautiful Essential lines, for example, and not getting how anyone could be against that. But I'm going to agree about their TPBs being around for too little.

Is what modding in this site has come to? Poorly done personal insults and even poorer attempts at wit?

I'm not modding you. I'm interacting with you at poster level. If you are not up to it, you can post one of your anime faces and be done with this thread, but (for once) don't post poorly recooked snark because you don't care about a thread and then whine about being told to stop it. Got it?

Oh, no, no worries there, only people with no souls have a problem with the Essential line.

Plus, for all the issues I do have with Marvel's business practices, they threadbind their hardcovers, which I really, really, really wish DC would do more often. *glances in ire at Fables Deluxe Editions*

I'm not modding you. I'm interacting with you at poster level. If you are not up to it, you can post one of your anime faces and be done with this thread, but (for once) don't post poorly recooked snark because you don't care about a thread and then whine about being told to stop it. Got it?

Wait you actually accusing me of snark when...Jesus your double standards just went trough the roof

And who the hell's whining. The only complaint I had was the continued discussion about something that was denied outright and you come in here with a holier then thou attitude and borderline trolling you often partake in

Oh, no, no worries there, only people with no souls have a problem with the Essential line.

Plus, for all the issues I do have with Marvel's business practices, they threadbind their hardcovers, which I really, really, really wish DC would do more often. *glances in ire at Fables Deluxe Editions*

Thanks, that just helps me avoid one source of temptation! What I wish Marvel would get right is the severity of their binding, sometimes the pages fall open properly, other times you have to smack the book around to get the same effect!

And Dark Horses Facebook said to stay tuned in the new year for a response on these rumours. They cant say anything as per request by Lucasfilm before theb1st of January.

To be fair to Marvel there are several years between those two announcements, there was a good Newsarama article on it too. Personally I found Spider-Men to be an effective coda to Bendis' Parker run, story worked well and Pichelli's art was gorgeous, but then I read it in collected OHC format.

Sure, they love the fact they can reprint what they've already paid for in single issues and recoup extra money by selling it in trade. A quick way to resell what they've already sold once - it's the same psychology as double-shipping, I'd guess - the desire to sell more without really considering the long-term repercussions on the customer and buying habits (I do find myself wondering if Marvel ever expected a readership of any appreciable size to develop who only waited for the trades rather than buying it twice).

I think part of the issue here is the fact that we're blurring the boundaries of the fact that "graphic novel" was originally a term used for more serious, "mature" storytelling intended to be differentiated from serialised superhero comics. Vertigo was instrumental in the 90s in terms of exploiting - and indeed creating - the OGN market, and yes, in also serialising it on a monthly basis but still creating a TPB with the cache and presentation of an original graphic novel.

Marvel may have assisted in creating the mainstream practice of bundling up a bunch of single issue superhero comics and reselling them as a trade, but unlike other publishers, their forays into OGNs, or that hybrid - the "indie" book that sells better in trade to the bookstore crowd than the comic store to the superhero crowd - have always been brief and sparse. At least in the last few decades. And it's those books, and OGNs, not Marvel's TPBs, that rule the trade charts.

Marvel treat the trade market like a freebie add-on, not like an actual market to be approached on its own terms. Which is fine, they're clearly a solvent business with their own strategies and they make a lot more money than me! But I think that qualifies as not really caring about it beyond the free money they can make by throwing out a trade for a few months before allowing it to fall out of print.

That's very interesting information. I suppose it does make sense, from a certain perspective, but it seems so strange to me that Marvel wouldn't see a market for TPB's beyond the people who rebuy them for the sake of having their single issues collected. I'd always imagined a large purpose for the TPB is to both get new readers up to speed, and to keep acclaimed runs collected for sake of preservation (though I suppose Marvel do do that, to an extent, with stuff like Astonishing X-men).

Personally, I'm not sure how a comic reader of the 90's would have gotten up to speed without existing TPB's. Of course, I'm heavily biased in this area, because I don't like buying single issues, and I like to know everything that comes before a story I'm reading... most readers can just roll with it, I suppose. I remember trying to get into Spider-man in the early 2000's, picking up an issue here and there, and being so lost that I would never return for the following issue.

I guess that might be a type of generation gap talking. With the internet, it's incredibly easy to get caught up. Spoils us, it does.

Marvel in the 90s gets slammed not because of its comics overall during the decade, but what happened by the end. Marvel was barely afloat by then, and with good reason. I'm not the biggest Quesada fan, but the idea that popular brands will sell without having a decent artist or author didn't work out the way they hoped - and bringing in acclaimed ones (and ditching the hoary Comics Code) was the best thing they could do. (And then they got bought out, and actually made movies that sold money, which certainly helped )